The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad.
This award will support a twenty-four month research fellowship by Dr. Nina J. Karnovsky to work with Dr. Jan Marcin Weslawski, Head of the Arctic Ecology Group at the Institute of Oceanology, Polish Academy of Sciences (IOPAN) in Sopot, Poland, and Drs. Geir Wing Gabrielsen and Stig Falk-Petersen at the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) in Tromso, Norway.
This Fellow will investigate how dovekies, Arctic seabirds, respond to changes in ocean currents passing near their colonies at Spitsbergen. There are two major currents there, one from the Atlantic with small zooplankton and one from the Arctic with large zooplankton. Prevalence of Arctic currents depend on weather patterns that are driven by climate change. The PI will study how dovekies adjust their foraging to variations in the distribution of these currents. This study will provide evidence of how weather-driven changes in currents may impact seabirds.
